When the Day is Done
by Madwoman with a box
Summary: Hatter may have been a monster for what did, for the people she killed, lives razed to the ground. Even for all of that she was still human, and humans have limits. this is part of a series, and its kind of bad please dont read it ( i will be redoing the entire thing with more balanced chars and a plot that makes sense)
1. Chapter1: Drinking Games

Quincy Sharp did not enjoy having sessions with the patients at Arkham. He did because it was a necessary formality for the director to asses each patient. Most of the time it was easy painless work, the patient came in and stared blankly or babbled about nothing. That always changed when he got to the more interesting patients. People like the rogues, each of them had their own little quirks and ways of managing to not cooperate with their doctors. And the Tetch girl wasn't any different. The media had yet to add her to the so called Gallery, Quincy wasn't sure what they were waiting for, but she was just as trying as the rest of them. Particularly because she knew to much. It was really to bad he couldn't kill her, or lobotomize. He'd have to check whether that was still legal.

"Why did you want to see me Tetch?" Quincy asked irritably, a lunch date with a very pretty nurse had been cut short by this.

"That's not my name, I'm Hatter." She told him calmly content to take her time getting to the point. She had asked to see him now because she knew he would take it and because she knew it inconvenienced him. The nurse however, Hatter was sure, had found one of her many orderly 'friends' to keep her company.

Quincy rolled his eyes and snapped at her, "I don't care, cut to the chase."

"I have to start at the beginning and go on till I get to the end, and I will get there in due time. Don't forget I gave you your job Mr. Sharp, I can take it away just as quickly." The orderlies who had accompanied her to the office and still stood behind the chair where she sat didn't even flinch. They had long since learned to hear and see nothing within the walls of Arkham.

Quincy shut up immediately, there her knowing to much again. There had to be someway to get rid of her, where the blame wouldn't fall on him. She still had the mother who came by every so often, there couldn't be any questions if she was to disappear.

"How would you like to be mayor? Elections are this year you know." Hatter asked quite suddenly staring at Quincy to gauge his reaction, "And you know I can make it happen, if I get what I want."

Only slightly taken aback, nothing was unexpected with this one, Quincy waved the orderlies out of the room. Even some things could not be silenced by the Asylum. Mayor Sharp, had a certain ring to it he though, and of course as mayor Quincy could throw his weight behind the death penalty the next time Miss Tetch got caught. No questions would be asked, no police poking around the asylum perfectly legal. Except for the election no doubt.

"What do you want?"

Hatter smiled, she knew she had him. Whatever she asked for she could get it at this moment, "Well you know I'm an absolute spoilt brat so naturally I want a good deal of things. I want everything that got confiscated when I got turned in, hat, clothes, chips the lot of it. And I want you to let me escape. In turn you will register for the election and I will rig the votes. Lets drink on it, I've never had scotch."

Hatter stood up and walked to a bookshelf on the side of the room with a very handsome set of glass decanters and cups. Managing very well for wearing handcuffs she poured two cups full out of a very expensive looking bottle and dropped it on the floor so that it shattered in a pool of amber liquid and thick shards. Just because Hatter knew it would irritate the soon to be mayor. He didn't see her add a folded paper of a chemical concoction she had forced Jonathan to make her during that short time long ago. The one thing they hadn't managed to take from her. She put one of the cups on the desk and paused with the other halfway to her mouth, " What do you say, Mayor Sharp?"

Quincy took his cup drained it and said, "Miss Tetch as of today I deem you completely cured and fit to join society."

"A very funny lie," She answered draining her own glass and flinging it aside to join the broken bottle, "I want out tonight, make it happen Doctor."

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AN: Please note that the events of this chapter do not devalidate those of _The War Inside Her Head this story is the events leading u to that point_


	2. Chapter2: No Rest For the Wicked

A great black pit, like a scar. It was all that was left of her home. There was the room where wssc members had camped out. Another room Where Alice housed the street children she had so adored, making them fat on tea and cookies. The seldom used kitchen, because she seldom ate either forgetting to in the midst of her work or simply being to busy. The frame of the stairs just barely hung together above it would have been a small room just big enough to house a tea table. A table that she had stained three years ago during a tea party where the little Radoe girl had fed Sweet rabbit things that made her cough up blood. Pins and needles and little broken razors. There had also been three doors off to the side, three rooms where the rulers of her wonderland had been kept. The first door had housed first the Cheshire cat, and then Scarecrow, the visitor from Oz. the second door was a slightly bigger room, for the king and queen of hearts and the white rabbit. The third door had been her room. The place where she had built her kingdom, planning for nights and days. And where it had all fallen down, because she had been blinded by hubris and confidence.

And of course the chasm below it all that had never been visible before, but could now bee seen clearly for what it was. Hell. But wasn't it absolutely ludicrous? Frabjous day calloh callay wasn't it? For in the end she kept her promise of four years to burn Sweet rabbit to death. The mask was in her hands, it had lived through what its owner hadn't, perfect black and red porcelain. The mask may be complete, unscathed, oh but Rabbit had cracked finally and forever. Couldn't there be relief in know humpty dumpty couldn't be put back together again?

All of this raced through Hatter's mind as she looked at the remains of her home. It had been home, closer to it than she and Alice had gotten in a long time. Hatter couldn't remember when there had been a real home except from feeding on Alice's memories, and even then it was only a few years. Here they had been safe for a time, happy, sheltered, powerful. For that one year before they had been locked up in Arkham to rot, they had the world in their palm. Now Hatter was tired, she didn't want to run and search and hide anymore. But like they say, there isn't any rest for the wicked, and no solace would ever be found till she had Gotham, then the world and the universe. There would never be rest.

Hatter turned away from the wreck refusing to look back at it again. She knew all of this and she knew that someday she would look back and she would see everything she had razed to the ground to make her life. And she didn't think she would care.

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Laine turned off the tv, her only baby girl had been released from Arkham. Why did it make her sick, to know she was out? Why couldn't she feel happy that maybe she would get to hold her again without the cameras and the guards? Laine, the hell was that even her name? Why was it that every one in her family was so good at running away? March, and Alice, now Dodge who never came home anymore. She had been the first of course, and she had ran faster and harder than any of them. She had ignored little things that she should have paid attention to in her haste. The bruises, the trips to the hospital, the time March had gutted a bird looking for it's eggs, Alice talking to herself in class. Things that she would have noticed if she had stayed Alice. Too little to late, it was time to move on, she would live for a while yet and it was time to do something. Maybe her mind was going, it was about time.


	3. Chapter3: Lithium

Gotham high was in a stae of being continuosly rebuilt and expanded. It had at one time, according to student legend, been a normal sized school without any extra class rooms. However the inability of the school to remain completely standing for longer than two months forced administration to reconsider the layout of the school. The regular classrooms were currently under reconstruction following a rather nasty argument between the chemistry and metal shop students. The students were now taking their classes in a newer wing that had amazingly so far survived all of its two years without undergoing serious damage, unless you counted the fashion clubs valentines day decorations that is. The faculty was just pleased that it hadn't been blown up yet. Of course the somewhat absent minded student in the chemistry lab could change that at any moment.

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"I am a genius! Somebody ask me why I'm a genius!" Shouted a girl standing on top a wheely chair holding a test tube of a very volatile looking green liquid above her head in at triumphant pose

Dodge grinned at the antics of the lanky blonde, the only girl in the entire school who would rather spend lunch in the chemistry lab than in the cafeteria vying for positions as hench wenches of future rogues, "Watch yourself energizer bunny, can't have you dropping that. This is the last chemistry lab until they fix the rest of the school."

"Dodgey! My man, my number nine! I have something for you but ask me why I'm a genius." She grinned playfully, she had slightly wonky teeth that looked just a little to big to fit in her mouth.

"Why, are you a genius Charlotte?" Dodge asked smiling back at her from a stool on the other side of the intricate mess of Bunsen burners and glass tubes.

She exchanged the green test tube for one with clear liquid, "Darling, you take psychology yeah? So you understand that insanity is basically a chemical imbalance in the brain? There fore theoretically all forms of insanity could be manufactured in little ingestable forms, think about it; health teachers could teach about mental diseases through firsthand experience, because it was ingested you'd be fine by the end of the day. Writers and poets that take LSD looking for the weird visions and whatever could instead take schizophrenia much healthier much more potent."

"So why are you a genius?"

Charlotte frowned at the interuption, "Patience young grasshopper, you see this little test tube? I manufactured OCD and then I worked backwards and made the opposite of that. Number nine, this is the most absolutely perfect medicine for OCD ever. Your body won't reject it or grow tolerant ever, and the best part is that it tricks our brain in thinking its fine so it starts making all the right chemicals again. It's like normal person brain juice!"

Dodge laughed, "Thanks for the visual, I'm not drinking that now. Is that what you had for me?"

Charlotte shook her head and kicked off the table sending her chair sailing across the room with her pigtails flying behind her, "A lady with red hair came by with this and told me to tell you Alice is going to be at the Looking Glass lounge at six." She held up a silver mask with a metal grate over the mouth, Silence.

Dodge came up and took the mask turning it over in his hands, only one night he'd worn it so why did it mean so much? He reached up and lifted Charlotte down from her chair, "Number three, I think it's high time you met the rest of my mad family. How would you like to go down the rabbit hole with me?"

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AN: the nicknames Number Nine and Number Three are based on the periodic table of elements. Number nine is flourine which other elements find very easy to bond with, and number three is lithium a main ingredient in energizer bunny batteries.


	4. Chapter4: Welcome to Wonderland

Hours of wrestling with peroxide and hair straighteners and brushes. Trying not to scratch her head raw at the bleach burnt the color out of her hair. But now a black headband, a blue sundress and she was undeniably Alice. Now in a bar that was so filled with smoke it was hard to see yourself in the mirrors that covered the walls, smoke that made the flashing multicolored light and pounding music seem like the most amazing things. All these people lost in their own personal wonderlands made from drug or drink or sex. And only she, the Hatter was truly from wonderland. Alone at the bar like so many other lost souls, artist and writers hoping to drown their loss. It felt…nice, not exactly frabjous but nice to know that she could be one of them, not crazy, not evil, not blinded by lust for power but just there. She asked for a wine.

"How old are you girl?" the bartender asked eyeing this new girl suspiciously, most of his customers were regulars who kept coming for the 'tortured artist' scene

"Older than the fifteen year old with the brandy over there." Hatter responded nodding at the other end of the bar.

The bartender shrugged, he didn't really care how wasted these kids got, so long as they were in high school he figured it didn't matter. Hatter got her wine. There was only enough alcohol to give her a sort of buzzy feeling in her head but that was all she wanted. When Dodgy the lizard came she wanted to be alert. What would he be like now, one year later? Bitter certainly, angry, he might hate her, another name on the ever growing list of lives she ruined.

_I don't hate you,_ Alice murmured from the depths of her mind somewhere, _I don't like you much, and you're mean, but I don't hate you._

'Coming from you that's not much, you like everybody." Hatter muttered under her breath, her heart skipped a beat though, flattered.

_No, I'm not little you know. Maybe I like to pretend but I'm not ten anymore._ Neither of the two said anything for a while._ You know you could have asked._

"What would I ask you for?" Hatter snapped still keeping her voice low and glancing around to make sure no one had heard.

_If you wanted me to talk to you when we were younger you could have asked. You need to learn to ask for things, I would have listened. Its alright to be lonely-_

"_Shut up, you're wrong I wasn't lonely." Hatter said fiercely and a bit louder than she had intended putting an abrupt end to the conversation._

"_Everybody's has something wrong with their head but I think you have a little more wrong than most." a voice said from a small gaggle of kids just into college, the speaker extricated himself and walked over to Hatter, "What's you're name?"_

_Hatter watched him coldly draining her glass, "I'm the Hatter, and who are you?"_

_He laughed, "Hatter? Like Lewis Carroll Hatter, or are you a Tetch?"_

"_My question first who are you?"_

_He didn't get to answer because a girl, with short hair so pink it was practically neon, broke away from the group and came over, " Dude, Matthew, we need you back here. David and Daniel need you to settle something about Jar Jar Binks or whatever, Star Wars nerd stuff. Ooh wait, is she your girlfriend?"_

_He, Matthew shook his head and headed back to the group, "Thank you Tiffany, but I don't think you need to know."_

_The girl, Tiffany lingered a moment, "Good luck if you're trying to get Matthew, too professional. He does something with bones for the Police, sorta like a coroner I think. Dudes like twenty something and he's got all sorts of degrees. Guy's a genius, he's not exactly good looking though know what I mean? Acne scars, you need to be tripping to get past those. Speakin' of," She placed what looked like a postage stamp with a grinning Cheshire cat on the bar, " I use LA recipes, gotta represent my hometown, you won't get better stuff anywhere. First ones free."_

_And she was gone, Hatter relaxed and picked up the stamp. She turned it over in her hand, wondering what it was at first and what she was supposed to do with it. Glancing back at the group she saw Tiffany with her pink hair watching her. She smiled and made a motion putting her hand to her mouth. So she was supposed to eat it? Hatter looked at it again, whatever it was this girl was selling them and it wouldn't do to poison potential customers. Gingerly, Hatter placed the square of paper on her tongue._

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"_Hey! I've been here before Number nine!" Charlotte exclaimed looking around the bar, "I didn't know the name but I've been here!"_

_Dodge looked at her disbelieving, "This is the drug circuit part of town what were you doing here?"_

_Charlotte grinned, "I'm a chemist with a very dear love for very expensive online gaming, do the math."_

"_So you deal?" Dodge asked leading her through crowds of half drunk people dancing._

_Charlotte made a face, "I deal to dealers, I'm a producer, fueling the trade in urban gold ma cherie. Hey lookie! She's one of my customers!"_

_Charlotte pulled dodge with her to a girl with bright pink hair. She was now sipping a, well she didn't know what it was, something with vodka. Come to think of it she couldn't remember picking it up either, no matter wasn't like it was the first time. She was already tipsy, and she wasn't even wearing heels, yet, Tiffany had an unfortunate habit of leaving the club with clothes that she hadn't gone in with._

"_Number two! Long time no see!" Charlotte exclaimed bounding over to the group, "Want you to meet my Number nine, this is Dodge."_

_Tiffany nodded smiling mostly because she felt drunk or high or both, "You're Charlottes boyfriend! I seen you before? You're not one of my users, not one of my friends. Naw it's the face, big teeth and the funny nose! There's a girl downa thatta way who's a dead ringer for you kid. Be good to Charlotte yeah?" She grinned again before heading back towards the bar hoping for another drink._

_Charlotte giggle, "Number two is helium, Tiffy's higher than a kite. I think its because she's got Hollywood on the brain. West coast types, you know how they can be. And I don't even think she was on anything right now-"_

_Dodge was barely paying attention looking for the girl Tiffany had mentioned, it had to be Alice. Charlotte had said Alice, not Hatter. He had never really met Alice, Hatter he had known for much longer than he would have like to. Alice though he was sure would be different, had to be. She had always looked so happy in the baby pictures Laine had hidden away.. Working his way through crowds looking for the mess of red hair he remembered. A blonde girl tracing patterns in the air, a very engaged couple, a few girls playing shots. He didn't see Alice, had she left already? Or maybe she hadn't come yet? Then someone screamed._

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_AN: I do not condone the use, selling buying, producing or being in the presence of drugs or alcohol be they legal or otherwise._


	5. Chapter5:White Lightning

Hatter POV

Have you ever lived through the looking glass? In your own little world inside your head, where anything can and does happen? You have, as a child we all do. We have the looking glass at our beck and call, should we ever get bored as children we have only to imagine ourselves there. And then as we grow reality encroaches, school is no longer only a social time but the thing that shapes our futures. Money must be earned, food bought, bills payed for, and relationships pursued. Until we just forget how go through the looking glass someday. Then we look, increasingly desperate for a way to get back through. Video games, television, music, art, literature all to distract us from the cold truth; reality hurts. Its cold, mean, brutally honest, and it doesn't play fair. It gives one man more money than most people could dream of, and another man dies on the street in the snow because he doesn't have a penny to his name. Reality only affects those who recognize it though. Those who don't continue to go through the looking glass, people like me who beat reality itself. Of course even that comes back to get you in the end.

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In and out, back and forth you could follow the music with your eyes. So pretty the most beautiful thing in the world. I wanted to touch it, the sound of the rhythms. The deep blue lows mixing with the sharp ringing highs. I traced it with my fingers. And the world began to spin around me the background stopping long enough for me to catch snippets of what was happening. There were bread-and-butter-flies and rocking-horse flies and real little dragons all flying around my head. Behind me I could see in one of the mirror that a grinning pink cat was walking by with the white rabbit and the queen of hearts. I didn't see where they went but they just were gone along with the things flying around my head. The lizard with beady little eyes and a gouged out face walked by with the dormouse that looked like it had died and was being sewn back together as it began to rot and decompose. And the world spun maddening fast, but then again I was already mad. The March hare in a svelte Victorian suit with a ball cane walked towards me, and suddenly there was a revolver leveled at my head. I could hear laughing but I wasn't sure if it was here or somewhere else, it sounded distorted like some one was playing it back to me on a broken cassette. The revolver was gone and the pink cat was back out of no where with hooks for hands and a smile growing painfully large. Its lips began to split dripping tiny rivulets of bright red. I could feel my eyes roll back wards in my head while the ever moving wonderland I could see made me dizzy and nauseous. A flash of silver hooks and I looked at my stomach, gouged open. All of my organs intact just the muscle and skin had been peeled back, it mangled my ribs and there just behind my lungs I could see my heart. I screamed for all I was worth and lashed out, clawing, biting, pounding fists anything just make it all go away.


	6. Chapter6: Number

Outside the club just far away enough to ignore the screams if they so chose, three figures from wonderland met with the purpose of completing a business transaction.

The pink Cheshire cat with the painful smile was waiting when the other two came up, "You know where I come from there are always warnings. You know? In Los Angeles when something is gonna happen you feel the tension, people start acting different, builds itself up before it breaks the dam. When something happens here, no warning something just snaps. Like you ever high school boys before a fight? Puff out their chests, circle each other, dance then they start punching. Then high school girls it's just bam! Some ones on the floor with a busted lip and you don't remember how or why."

"You get used to it, Hollywood you learn to live in the moment." The White Rabbit told her, what felt like to many lifetimes in this city had taught her that.

The Cheshire cat nodded, it wasn't something you got used to it was something in you when you were born, "You owe me money, and don't be cute and pretend like the freaks who try to rip me off with their bigger picture nonsense. I don't buy that bs."

The white rabbit smiled and took a wad of bills from her coat, "Five thousand, you'll get the rest of the money when we decide."

"You want it done quick or can I take my time?" The Cheshire cat asked taking the money eagerly already spending it in her head.

The Queen of hearts finally spoke up," Drag it out, three years, five months, and nineteen days. "

The Cheshire cat looked up distracted from her earnings, "Specific much? Any reason you want it that long in particular?"

"Personal grudge, not really any of your business." The White rabbit explained quickly, The Queen was once again silent.

"Sorry, I'm a nosy Golden coast girl. You'll have to forgive the intrusion, how much is the remainder of my payment?" She grinned already reabsorbed in her money.

"You'll get five each year and ten when you're done with the whole job." The White rabbit reminded her, an exorbitant fee, but it wasn't her money.

"That's why like this city, I wouldn't get a third of that anywhere else."

The White rabbit smiled, "I'm paying you to shut up about it, you go running to the D.A. they'll cut you a deal in no time, parole couple hundred under the table. But my budget is bigger than theirs, Hollywood. And your clients don't like snitches."

"Right as usual, but you know I don't care about turning you in. I have a very narrow mind, money, drugs and vodka." She told them as she turned away leaving the Rabbit and the Queen in the alley way, "So this is how people with power fall? By a deal cut in a dark alley way?"

Not quite out of earshot amongst the screams that had still not subsided, the Queen of hearts could be heard, "I've seen her, she's not going to ever be right again, she's a killer and an absolute ruler who can't give up her power. How did you think it happened to Caesar?"

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Mayor Sharp, there was a glorious ring to the title and how it paired with his name. No one knew it yet of course. Not his opponents, certainly not the voters. Just him and the Tetch girl. She might be a problem, no she would be a problem. There wasn't any doubt about that in his mind, in fact she already was problem. He should have just let her escape, surely there was no way she could have eluded a manhunt by the Gotham police force. Of course it looked better on his part to have 'cured' her so quickly. Metaphorical if you will, the start to curing the city, or so they could think. Either way he needed her back here, Arkham Asylum where you could scream all you wanted. You could shout manifestos and essays and theorems to the world and no one would pay any heed because you were crazy. He had to admit though, there was some credence to the old saying that Arkham twisted more minds than it cured. Even he was starting to hear things, see shadows moving in the corners of his eyes. You could chalk it up to necessary paranoia from working with the criminally insane, and lack of sleep. It wasn't something you spread around, there was no need for him to get locked up in his own asylum like some of his predecessors. When that was the other option, you learned to think it was nothing and ignore it. Of course if Quincy Sharp had bothered to count back the days to when he'd began seeing things he might have noticed that it was the same day he had drinks with Alice Tetch.


	7. Chapter7: Ambition

People have said a lot of things about me. Called me a hero, for exacting cruel vigilante justice. Called me inhuman for the unspeakable torture. But those people have never heard me called daughter, sister, friend. I never wanted to be any of that though. Hero, criminal, sibling, child I don't care to be called any off those things. I am not a good person, I won't deny any thing because all of it is true. I don't regret what I've done. Alice does, you see I never wanted to be anything except the Hatter. Selfish little me, I wanted Alice all to myself. And what the people did not realize was that by putting me away they too crushed dreams. Alice may be a voice in _my head now like I once was in hers, but once she had ambitions. Major in literature at Oxford, become a writer, marry a nice English gentleman and settle down well away from Gotham, with two darling little children. Those were Alice's hopes and dreams while she thought she could have them, of course if I let her do that I couldn't have what I wanted. Don't you dare think for a minute that even what I've done makes me worse than her. Were our positions switched Alice would do exactly the same as I have. But remember she has not, and you can't punish me for these crimes without also punishing her._

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_Days left:_

_1263_

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_She has never wanted any thing so much in her life. Or if she has she cannot remember. By her count, kept through frequent glances at a clock on the bedside table in the dingy motel room, she has been laying here six hours alternately sleeping and pretending to. Six hours since the world stopped spinning and people were people not macabre characters of wonderland. The most terrifying night of her life, and she could taste it again. Blotter paper the kind used in printers, just a hint of ink from the picture of the Cheshire cat, and something bitter. A something with such a distinct taste, and absolutely irresistible. How could something so good, be so terrible? She pretends to sleep now savoring the slight aftertaste, of a sort of poison she knows, still lingering in her mouth. And for all of the longing she hates it, despises, fears even. So much that she thinks it could put her off it forever. So why is she still laying there trying to imagine the particular flavor of it?_

"_You'll have to get up eventually, you know. I mean you can't just lay there all day." Hatter finally looks over at a girl with bright pink hair lounging in a cheap armchair somehow talking through a cigarette clenched between her teeth, "Hell, for a first trip that wasn't half as bad as it could have been, least you didn't do anything to make a fool of yourself. The first time I had a blotter, long time ago let me think….. I ended up trying to get Mathew into bed. Never gonna live that down."_

_Hatter sat up, " You are fucking insane. What would possess any one to-"_

_She laughed, a laugh that turned into a hacking cough. The cigarette dropped to the floor and Tiffany crushed it out with the heel of a latex boot before taking another one out of a box on the coffee table in front of her. She lit it breathing deeply, a girl unknowingly committing suicide as slow as she knew how. For fear of her destination at the same time as she was running hard and fast from where ever she began. Doing her best to make the journey between the two last forever, " Don't ask me why, I don't know why. I don't care, I just care that it makes money. I am so not the person to ask. You could ask your kid brother when he comes back, maybe we'll both learn something."_

"_I don't want to see him," Hatter said quickly, no she wouldn't see any of them until it was on her ground and her terms, certainly not like this._

"_Well you're in luck, Mathew took him to the hospital. Short little thing like you beat 'em all up pretty damn good. Mathew's got bite marks, and you got really big teeth too no offense of course, but he's gonna need like stitches. Your brother… I dunno his nose was bleeding though. Wish I coulda seen it." Tiffany smiled, lost in imagining the scene for a moment. _

"_I'm leaving"_

_Tiffany shrugged indifferently, then got up suddenly as though having just remembered something. She started taking apart the room in search of something as Hatter stood to leave. Tiffany apparently found what she was looking for and came running back as fast as she dared, her heels much to high to be considered practical for walking let alone running._

"_Wait! Wait! Dammit would you stop?" Tiffany shouted irritably as she caught up to Hatter just out the door shoving a bag of little orange pills at her, "Take it. It's orange sunshine, an apology sorta, when you run out I'll be at the Looking Glass Lounge again just bring a shit load of money and we'll talk prices then. If you don't like acid, you know I got everything, I like to dabble. I have very diverse tastes, but yeah! I'll see ya, right!"_

_Then Hatter is alone in the hallway of the motel she is sure is otherwise empty. She walks out onto the street, broad daylight but in the daily rush of people she is lost. She knows she could drop the bag and it would be trampled and carried away so that she would never find it again. The idea makes Hatter cling all the more tightly to the bag, for fear that she would drop it accidentally. And then what would she do? Would the longing, the absolute need, wait until she could form a plan to rob a bank or some such place? Maybe Hatter would have been able to let it go, throw it down a storm drain and never go back through the doors of the Looking Glass. If she had been able to understand that as she walked down the street at that moment for perhaps the very first time she wasn't the one in control of her life._


	8. Chapter8: Plot Thickens

He is the Dodo Bird, obsessed with his own image. Striving forever to be something that he is not, slowly wasting away a fortune that he is just cunning enough to know to replenish at times. He makes an appointment with the same receptionist, the one that knows the payment and the surgery will not be on any books. No paper trails, at the insistence of not the Dodo Bird but the doctor, because this portion of his business is illegal. Mutilation, malpractice, investigation and loss of license. But the money offered by the Dodo Bird had long since eclipsed the risks.

"I hope you're not spending the money you me Ozzy?" The White Rabbit sauntered into the office, hands in the pockets of her jacket as she leaned against the reception counter, fairly towering over the short, and rather rotund, businessman.

"You know I hear Moroni's heir just had a very unfortunate accident, you wouldn't know anything about that? You should try out to be his lapdog then you could stop asking me for money." He replied peering over the counter as a few details were written down on a paper that would later be no doubt shredded and burned, "No, I said I wanted fused together or something, three fingers yah hear?"

The White Rabbit shook her head with a sort of half smile, "Ozzy, I'm not exactly the lapdog type. Unless I can bite the hand that's feeds me. I'm going to be making three very large withdrawals over the next couple of years. Thought I'd let you now so you don't go spending all your money on feather implants."

"Not a bad idea actually, hey can you guys do that? He asked more through the counter than over it.

"Feathers? I-I don't think so. I could ask but there- I mean um…..no." the receptionist stuttered, what had compelled these kind of freaks to come here?

"Aw well, but don't you worry Miss Moroni. I got plenty of money, I'm just messin' with ya. Come on if it weren't for you I'd have a bunch of psychiatrists trying to ask me how I feel bout every goddamn little thing." the Dodo Bird started waddling towards the door turning back to tip his hat at the receptionist as he left.

The White Rabbit watched him leave, "You know what it's for right? If she finds out that you're the one funding all this, there'll be hell to pay."

The Dodo Bird laughed, "Sweetie! She can't touch me. These new kids, they think they're the most amazing thing since sliced bread. Full of 'emselves. They don't got nothing when it comes to the originals. You can't beat the first edition know what I mean?"

"Yeah, just watch your back Ozzy."

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"I shan't condone this! I simply will not! If I were still up for such things I'd break out again to put a stop to all of this."

The Queen of Hearts pursed her lips for a moment, "But love, please understand. If she doesn't get what she wants nobody can, she doesn't realize the half of what she's done. Those children, it was just….. If you were me what would do?"

"Not what you're doing!" The King of Hearts snapped, " This might sound like a line from a cheap film but, this is just as bad as what she does."

A buzzer sounded and the Queen of Hearts glanced towards the door quickly, visiting hours were over.

"And eye for an eye. Remember she's not always Alice."

"Of course my dear, but how long will it take till we are all blind?"

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An: I do admit that I did really kinda steal the eye for an eye thing from one of Toffeerose's Harry Potter song fics _There Were Roses it's really a beautiful line and you know, as they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery._


	9. Chapter9: Wine and Vodka

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"A moment! Mr. Sharp! What's your position on-"

"I'm sorry, but it's been a long day. I promise I'll answer any questions you may have tomorrow," Quincy answered hastily closing the door on the horde of reporters, "Damn vultures."

He turned around suddenly at the sound of breaking glass. He really should have been expecting Tetch to show up eventually, and in all truth Quincy just hadn't expected it to be so soon. She was standing there holding a bottle of wine that had probably been a gift for the incoming Mayor. It appeared that the bottle had been smashed on the, no his, desk.

"I think I've nicked your desk," Hatter muttered running her thumb along the edge where she'd broken the bottle, " I couldn't find a corkscrew."

"What are you doing here? Get out." he took several steps towards herl.

Hatter took a mouthful of the wine, wrinkling her nose just slightly, cheap wine but it was better than nothing, " So I'll just go and have a nice heart to heart with you're vultures then? I'm sure they'd love to run a story on how you really got elected."

Quincy winced, a damn good point, " Then what do you want?"

"Today? I'm just reminding you that I own you because I know it bothers and I enjoy that." She drained the last of the wine but it hadn't even taken the edge off of what she'd been trying to ignore for weeks, she produced three blank checks placing them on the desk, " Sign these."

"I'm not going to give you any money."

Hatter nodded and began walking towards the door, "Right, so I'll go find the reporters-"

"Wait! Here." He practically threw them in her face, not that she cared.

"Smart choice Mayor Sharp. I do believe the governorship will be opening up next year? We'll talk about that next time I come by. One other thing, you really should see a doctor. It's never a good sign to be hearing voices." She ignored Quincy's questions but waited until he came right up to her still questioning to open the door, effectively slipping away from him and the reporters both leaving them to harass each other while she went home.

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Mathew POV

It was the same girl, couldn't have been anyone else. Hard to forget someone when they've tried to bite a chunk out of your arm. After we got Tiffany to fess up, it's hard to blame her. Especially with half of what some of my friends do when they're high. There was something off about her, little things people generally don't notice. She was thinner, no more like sallow, it was in her face if you looked closely. And before she'd had wine, now it was something clear, it might be water but more likely it was vodka or rum. And again she looked like she was waiting for someone.

"Have you ever thought about getting braces? It might help with your bite." What was that? How much more pathetic pick up line could I get?

She was glaring, I got the feeling she did that to a lot of people, but I would have been glaring if had said that to myself, "It wasn't any of you business to try to do anything to help me was it?"

"No, but it is a common courtesy to help somebody when they need it." Another thing she probably did often enough, games of wits to size up whether who was a predator and who was prey.

"Why would I need your help?" Despite the snapping her face softened slightly and she seemed to prefer averting her eyes rather than glaring.

"You were curled up on the floor screaming and crying, I think that's a pretty good reason." She seemed to change for a moment to hold herself differently. Something in her eyes caught at curiosity and hate. And then she had regained her composure, cold and aloof again.

"Fair enough, but most people wouldn't have cared." a challenge or a warning maybe, that I should leave her be.

"So? I did, and don't think you special. I'd do it for anyone." She smiled a slight curving at the very edges of her lips, "Do you ever go to any other bars or do you just troll this one?"

"Just here, I don't go out, well actually I do, increasingly often really."

"You do realize that there are many far nicer bars to spend your time at? Clearly not, I'll show you." Her smile got a little wider but she frowned and hesitated, " I'm sure you'd kick my ass if I tried anything, and I'm not going to. Come on." and there we were walking side by side out the door, I could not imagine the hell I was going to get from everybody else when they got around to asking.

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Alice POV

Hatter moved mountains and oceans so I would come running back to her, and I did. I ran back as fast as I could because there was no where else to run. And here she was leaving me, it wasn't fair. They say life isn't fair but they're wrong, it is but you have to force it to be fair. I've come to far to lose what little I have, I will make it fair. That I will swear on a grave that hasn't yet been dug for a boy who isn't quite dead.


	10. Chapter10: Ectasy

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"So You have absolutely no idea who I am?" Hatter smiled as they walked snow melting then turning to ice where they stepped, " Where have you been for the last four years?"

"California actually, I graduated college early and got a job as a forensic anthropologist for the GCPD. And then I've been on loan to the LA county PD to help them with a tricky serial murder case," Mathew knew she was teasing, holding what he wanted to know just far enough away that he could see but not touch.

Hatter was somewhat glad he didn't know who she was, she could only imagine if he did. Would he horrified, shocked, scared? Or disappointed and angry? _Why do you care, He's not anybody special, just like everyone else. Kill him. _He's not though, and she can't. Even if she'd never be caught, because the snow just frosting the ground now, will fall again tonight and erase everything. It would even bury the body for her till it melted and then any evidence would be long gone. She can't.

"Why was it tricky after four years? Serial killers generally get cocky and mess up after four or five murders," A fact learned from hours spent reading books and websites teaching an average person to commit perfect crimes.

Mathew nodded, and then frowned slightly, "That was the problem, we couldn't figure which murders were his. As soon as the gangs and the pimps figured out the MO, they started copying it. So I get ten bodies a month all of them killed exactly the same way, knife through the spinal cord and missing a backbone. I have to figure out how many are everyday killings and how many are actually our guy."

"Working as a corner, that can't be easy, and you're just a kid."

"Well you're not exactly a senior citizen yourself. Where were you four years ago?"

Hatter hesitated, fragile ground would have to be tread lightly, "I was here , I lived with my sister," _MY sister, and that's not really the truth is it Hatter?_

"Are you close to-"

"She's dead,"_ Are we going to tell him why?_

"Oh, I'm… sorry."

"No, don't be really," _Because you never cared did you? And you won't, is that what you're trying to do make him think you care and let him down and hope he comes running back to you, so you can do it all over again?_

They walked without saying anything for what seemed like the longest time. Hatter trying to both process and ignore what Alice had said. Mathew trying to think of something that wouldn't make the situation more awkward than it already was.

"Did you um, have fun? Tonight, I mean?"

"Of course. Actually, you know, I'm sorry but it's late I need to go home," Hatter said turning around to walk away.

Mathew went to follow her, "Let me walk you where do you live?"

"Maybe some other time," Hatter said dismissively walking faster doing her best to discourage him.

"What kind of gentleman am I if I don't you get home safe?"

Hatter stopped and turned to look at Mathew, " I will let you walk me home when you figure out who I am? Until such a time, you will have to trust that I am smart enough to not get myself killed or maimed. And if you do follow me I will disappear quite completely and you will not see me again."

_I wouldn't invite company over where we live either. You know it wouldn't hurt much to spend less time drinking yourself into a stupor, and more time looking for somewhere where we can actually turn on the heater._

"Shut up, I'm sick of you," Hatter muttered under her breath as she walked away again, " Do you feel guilty ever? Because you weren't smart enough to know what I was doing?"

_I'm smarter than you think I am, I'm learning all your little tricks stuck up in here._ Hatter felt a sinking feeling in her stomach and realized she was scared, of Alice.

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I didn't go home then, I circled around back to the Looking Glass Lounge. I needed the pills from that absurd girl with the pink hair. She was telling the truth when she said everything though, and I took all of it. Now I was home, huh home, and old apartment building that had been in violation of public safety code s for years. Focusing on laying out the small fortune I had acquired almost took my mind off the cold. I couldn't stop thinking that I had to board over the cracks and the broken window it wouldn't do to let the snow in for to long.

I selected a syringe and did like she had shown me. I couldn't feel it as I emptied it into a vein, shining blue just below skin. Was it really all that long ago? That I had tried to get rid of Alice, just till I could give her the world, and woke up with a an arm that might well have been dead? No, not really, a year, less actually, but only just. The syringe is empty, you'd think I of all people would have the good sense not to take poisons. I just can't wait though, it takes so infuriatingly long for a heart to beat enough blood for the high to hit.

_How the mighty fall. _

I wasn't even in the mood to snap at Alice, because it was nice not to care for now, about plans, and work. To see that its snowing again and the wind is blowing it inside, frosting the ground and not give a damn. You can feel it when it gets to your brain, because it feels like heaven if there's a place like that for me. Like it's not even cold.


	11. Chapter11: Poppy Tears

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Mathew really did worry about her. Tiffany, that is. She had never really been able to see very far past the immediate situation she was in. Not to mention the company she kept. Certainly he had gotten used to people showing up at unearthly hours of the night to complete transactions that usually involved large amounts of money and discreet paper bags. No that he was used to, he was even used to finding bottles of alcohol and drugs hidden everywhere, no matter how often he threw it all out. She pretended that she hadn't noticed, and they never spoke about it. Even now as she mixed and measured her chemicals that where usually hidden inside air vents, Mathew didn't say anything. The tension in their house was tangible, with a million lines to tread, each on finer than the last. But Mathew did love her and now he was worried that she'd gotten herself into something really dangerous.

"I don't want to discuss this with him here, Hollywood." Erin said shooting Mathew one of her cold glares across the kitchen table.

Tiffany laughed under her breath as she concentrated on pouring out a toxic looking liquid, "Sweetie, if Mattie was going to rat me out he would have done it years ago. Besides, he'd fall right with us for not turning me in for dealing."

Erin clenched her teeth, she still didn't like it but Tiffany did have a point, " I want to know how far along you've gotten in this whole thing."

"You have nothing to worry about, fell for the whole damn thing like a charm. For the first time in my life I have to make sure I don't sell a junkie too much. If I let her have her way she'd OD." Tiffany smiled looking up from the desk where she was sitting to look out the windows of the apartment that took up most of one wall, that view made up for the price tag nicely she thought.

"Is there anything else I need to know?"

That brought a slight hesitation to what had been fluid memorized motions. Knowing her back was to them and they couldn't see her face Tiffany bit her lip considering the question, "You should probably come over here to hear this."

Erin gave Mathew another glare before going over to trade whispers with Tiffany over her meth lab. After a few seconds she turned sharply on her heel, "End it, I don't care how. Break them up. If you can't do that I'll pay someone else to."

"No, I swear I can take of this! You wanted to know and I told you. I'm not saying I can't handle it. Hell I have been handling it!" Tiffany turned back to her chemicals as the door closed, but she couldn't be bothered to continue her work.

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It was Christmas. No that wasn't entirely correct, tomorrow was. Tomorrow was only four hours away though. It had never been a particularly special day for Hatter but Mathew had made her promise to meet him up so they could celebrate. Two months, ten maybe eleven or twelve dates. She had never been happier, even her other plans were so close to fruition. They still met up at the Looking Glass Lounge, Mathew had never guessed at who she was. He was still hoping she would tell him herself. For what felt like the millionth time Hatter pulled up a seat at the bar to wait.

"Hey!" a million watt smile and a head full of pink hair emerged from a crowd, "Before Mathew comes, I have some more inventory. I just wanted to check, I mean I'm sure you have plenty, but you know me fishing for cash."

Of course if she had gotten happier in the past months, not all of it could be attributed to completely positive means. There was a scar forming on the arm that always hung limp at her side from where she had pushed needles in with shaking hands. And she had to give the excuse that she was sick and yes she would got to see a doctor soon to gloss over her incessant coughing. Excuses, there had to be so many; of course she ate every day she had no idea why she was losing so much weight (an outright lie), and did she get enough sleep? She had circles under her eyes. Oh those? Eye makeup that she had tried to wash off. (She wouldn't have known what to do with eye makeup if she had any). Always a new excuse, a new way to dodge any questions.

"No actually, I need heroin syringes."

Tiffany nodded and then quickly glanced around, "Would you mind if we could do this out of the open. The cops have been cracking down on a lot of dealers and junkies to rat on the rest of us. I just need to be safe is all. Go to the ladies room and wait a few minutes, then I'll come and we can continue with business."

Hatter nodded, smart enough not to scan the room for any one who might have been observing, she did as she'd been told. She waited in the restroom examining her shoes for lack of anything better to do. She heard the door open and she looked up just as something connected with the side of her head hard enough to send her reeling. Vaguely she heard the lock of the door click as she tried to regain her balance. It took a few moments for her to regain enough of her senses to see clearly and by then she was pinned against the wall by the front of her coat.

"Do you remember the first time you came here and I told you to not bother with Mattie?" Never before had a baby-faced girl with pink hair looked so terrifying, "I admit, I may have stretched the truth a little bit. He's certainly very professional, very involved in his work. And I've tried to be very gentle with you about this-"

"Very gentle, you're a goddamn saint." Once again hatter felt something hit the side of her head hard enough to make her dizzy, only then did she see the faint shine of a black metal pistol in Tiffany's hand.

"Like I said, I really have tried. Which is why I've allowed this to go on for so long. But you've got to understand. Mathew doesn't like you. I mean you gotta realize, he's playing you sweetie."

"How the fuck would you know? You're lying, bitch." she didn't believe it Hatter promised herself, she didn't….if she didn't why was her throat getting tight like she was going to- she didn't get to finish that thought because suddenly she felt her self falling and only when she hit the ground did she realize her feet hadn't been touching the ground.

"He comes home and we laugh about it, how stupid you are for falling for it. And because Mattie is going out with me. He loves me!" Each word ended with a sharp kick that left Hatter on the floor in pain. Tiffany bent down and took a wad of cash out of Hatters pocket counting out syringes as she continued, "You wanna know what he was going to do tonight? Take you out to eat of course like usual, you would walk and talk. Every thing real gentlemanly and proper like. And then at midnight, Christmas and all, he was going to tell you for a Christmas present. But it's Christmas eve, and a joke isn't worth not spending Christmas eve with your boyfriend. Not that you would know. Okay so here's ten syringes I'll put them in your pocket. I'll see you again in two weeks yeah?"

She smiled as she left, like nothing had happened. Hatter sat up slowly leaning against the wall, after a minute she reached up and wiped her face on her sleeve, unsure of whether it was blood or tears. She couldn't help that she had loved him now, it was like some twisted beauty and the beast story. The forensic coroner and the mad felon. It was this damn city, it destroyed everything in it. Instead of happily ever after it was a cruel juvenile joke. Hatter would learn from her mistakes though, she knew who it was safe to love now.

_Me? I'm never going to leave. In fact I can't, we'll be stuck with each other for the rest of our life. We can be friends again, like when we were little?_

Yes, Alice and the Hatter because they'd never really had any one else who cared, had they? Hatter pushed herself to her feet hearing the syringes fall against each other in her pocket as she walked. She saw Mathew waiting for her at the bar where she usually was, she went for the exit.

"Hatter! I've been waiting for you-" Mathew caught up to her catching her by the shoulder but stopped speaking when Hatter mumbled something.

"I hate you."

"_What?"_

"_I hate you!" Hatter felt more tears coming washing away drying blood as she screamed. It was another excuse, for her own benefit trying, wanting, to believe the lie. She couldn't, and that was why it hurt so much. But she had Alice and Alice could make it right the same way Hatter had done for her._

_Even through the tears she smiled, sad and desperate and back at square one. Revenge the game that had gotten her in Arkham. Every one was staring at her, this crazy possessed girl, she did the only thing she could and ran. She would go home with one less thing to distract her from her real plans. So intent was she on getting away she didn't get to see what happened next. As Mathew turned around to look at his friends trying to figure out what had just happened. He saw Tiffany wipe a proud smile off her face as quickly as she could, but not fast enough._

"_What the hell did you do?" He demanded, knowing enough to see past the clueless look._

"_What it's my fault your girlfriends a psycho? Dude the whole city knows it, brush up on what happened while you were on vacation back home." _

"_I don't know what happened here while I was in California, but I do know there is blood on your shoes. What you should know is that there is one thing keeping me from beating you senseless, and that is the fact that you are my sister. And believe me that's not going to hold up for very long. So you had better tell me what you did."_


	12. Chapter12: Crying weed

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The silence after the gunshot seemed somehow louder and more tangible than the actual sound. The doctor was dead, her hand had been shaking but at point blank range it didn't matter. And the innocent smile, like a child's, never left her face.

" I'm so happy I got here before you put under for the surgery, I'd have had to wait for hours. Not that I have any thing else to do, I just hate having to wait," Alice said walking around the body to face Oswald, " I'm terribly sorry I had to kill him, but I've brought my own doctor. He's very difficult to get into contact with, he's a touch trigger happy so to speak. Professor Pyg?"

"Hey kid look, we don't need to get violent here what do ya want?" Oswald asked tightening his grip on his umbrella.

Alice pulled a sheaf of papers out of a pocket, " Signatures, it's far to much effort to forge them when I can just ask, nicely."

In the second that she looked away to take the papers out of her pocket, Oswald pulled a knife from the handle of his umbrella and had it at her throat, "Yeah right, you think ya got me that easily kid. Ya got a reason I shouldn't gut you right now?"

"No, by all means please do," Alice had let some small bit of Hatter out in that sentence and her eyes fell though her smile didn't, "But I'd bet my bullet is faster than your knife. Sign the papers."

It was an amazing feeling, she decided as she looked over the documents, to have more money than she would ever use. Maybe after she had taken care of business here she'd buy a small country.

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Hatter Pov

The higher the pedestal the harder the fall, or so they say. Is that what I'm doing? Protecting myself from falling again by making sure I'm never high enough to get hurt? No, I'd be lying if I pretended I had some ulterior motive to this. Inhale, remember slowly or it burns inside. Ten times as hot as tobacco, somewhere around twice as many carcinogens. You'd think I of all people would be smart enough not to poison myself. I'm not in denial, I know I shouldn't, but I also know if I stop I'll get sick. Truthfully, I enjoy it. But that's the definition of it, addiction; to devote oneself completely. That's why it's dangerous, you love it, until you fall. But it helps, it does, numbs the pain. It helps me to forget him.

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An: I feel sorta bad because this is such a short chapter, but my previous chapter makes up for it as does this authors note. The definition of addiction is from the American Heritage Dictionary. And I had to throw a hetalia reference in there. The small country Alice is talking about is Sealand (it's actually not really a country but they're trying :/ ) , which it's royal family is willing to sell for ten million US. There are houses that cost more than that, in like California. So if any one has ten million dollars to spare, don't buy Sealand it's mine!


	13. Chapter13: The Games We'll Play

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Mathew heard the door open and a few moments later a hand waving a thick file appeared in his peripherals.

"If you dump that on top of my cadaver I'm locking you in the freezer. I don't want the paper fibers in John Doe's organs."

"Whoa, cool it! See that's funny because-"

"Evan has anyone ever told you that it defeats the purpose of telling a joke if you have to explain it?" Mathew finally looked up from the corpse placing the retrieved bullet on a tray and taking off his gloves before grabbing the file, "I owe you one."

"Yeah you have no idea the amount of red tape I had to go through. Actually I was hoping you could help me because the weird girl from the forensics lab-"

"No, if you intend to blackmail me into that you can have this back," Mathew said already thumbing through the file, "Who did these pictures? Idiot can't hold a camera steady."

"Let me see," he plucked one of the pictures out, "Oh god…that's not blurry, that's just sick. There's a couple of boxes upstairs that go with it, case evidence you might wanna see."

They had to be though there was no way it, no she this was a girl, looked like that, "Yeah, tell specter I'll give him my report tomorrow, but it looks like another mugging gone wrong. I'm gonna get home, the interns can take care of the cleanup."

"Sure, you got a real piece of work to read huh?"

"You have no idea."

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Mathew Pov

It's not possible, Evan is playing some prank on me, because there isn't any way this can happen to some one and they could live. Except it did happen, and they did live. I've got to stop doing that, de-personifying her. Her name is March, she was sixteen then, she was far from a good person, but who am I to judge. It doesn't matter, no one deserves that. When I was in LA some one told me to stop questioning why it happens stick to how or you'll go mad. I'm not going to go mad, I don't obsess over why. Usually you don't get answer, so there's just no point. But this time the answer is so simple, childish in fact, it's the thing of boys pulling girls ponytails in kindergarten and temper tantrums. This time I don't wonder why, I'm obsessing over what. What switch flipped in Hatters brain, that turned jealousy and neglect into…..If I wanted to know I suppose I should have been a psychiatrist.

I wonder what it's like to have to share a body amongst two people. Her sister, March, never did anything to her directly. It would seem Hatter was really angry at her second personality. She couldn't very easily torture herself though. I worry about what she'll do to me, more though I worry what she does to herself. She did try to hide it and I let it go, but I live with an addict. Drugs don't mix well with insanity, real clinical insanity. She's going to start coming apart at the seams, she knows but the problem is that she doesn't care. She's smart though, that'll keep her going long enough. If I'm wrong though… well if I'm wrong I'll be the one exhuming her body.

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Alice Pov

It's not here, why is it here? I take their medicine, everyday twice a day like it says. Even if it hurts to think, every day. So **that shouldn't be standing by the window looking at me. It's Hatter's fault, she does those stupid things that make all of them come back. It's still here, that damn rabbit. Haunting me, and it's not my fault. I didn't kill you, her, it. Out of everything we've done, I've done, the one thing that just might tip the scales in my favor when we're dead is that I never once hurt her. Someday I'm sure I'll play that game, with a scale and a million or two marbles, tally up everything I've ever done and see if I'm going to heaven or hell. It's still there, it looks like her, pretty I suppose, prettier than I ever thought I was. Not scarred, not blind, she's blaming me. **

"**Who should I blame, you're not half as gullible as you act," Voices in my head, it's like there's another one of us. But is she right? I can make her right, I will. I can be Hatter, the scary strong one. I'm already starting to, I'm not as good at it as she was. Was, past tense, when did that happen? Not in reality, but in my mind just now? No it's been coming on for a long time.**

"**Hatter liked to play funny little games with rabbits," Memories that are not mine well up, look but I can no longer touch. The rabbits gone, but I'll get a new one, "Pleasant, happy, little games….."**


	14. Chapter14: Deja vu

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It was an obsession anyone could have seen it. The constant counting, tapping of fingers in perfect rhythm with the clocks on the wall counting off seconds. Perhaps a nod to the time she had once spent locked up by a girl who should have been her daughter. When she had at first tried to remember how long she'd been there by counting off seconds and minutes and hours. When she stopped counting, she remembered hearing soft screams coming from the basement. She did what she had always done and ran started counting over, anything to forget what was happening.

Sometimes Dodge thought he hated his mother.

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"Dodgey, have some fun please?"

He looked at Charlotte, he did really want to enjoy himself here, it would make her happy. The whole sleazy underground atmosphere the club had was just…not comfortable, to say the least. Granted the next Andy Warhol was probably pondering life at the bar, still the music, the drinking, the drugs….just wasn't for him.

"I'm trying number three, I'm just .."

"High falutin? Don't give me that look you are!" Well she was right but it didn't mean he had to admit it, "Imma get you a drink… what? Seriously? Man up, I'm not gonna get you wasted Number nine."

Charlotte slipped off into the mass of people to find the bar and Dodge did is best to feel somewhat at ease. It wasn't working, fidgeting slightly in his seat he looked around the club, the strobe lights gave the room a sort of pipe dream quality. Most of the people around him were to occupied to be talking with one another , the loud music would have made it hard anyway. Except for one pair he just realized, a girl and a boy. They looked like they were sick, and had been for a long time. Sort of jittery, and like they were rotting on their feet. They exchanged something between them, what looked like wads of bills and syringes. So they weren't talking then. She turned around and hurriedly walked away, briefly Dodge saw the full view of her face.

"Alice? Alice!" She kept walking heading towards what looked like private offices, "Hatter!"

Finally she looked back over her shoulder and saw him, she started running but the crowds made it nearly impossible and he caught up to her.

"Alice, Tiffany said you ran off and I looked for-" Suddenly Dodge felt something cold pressed on his stomach, her hands were shaking.

"I swear I'll shoot you if you say her name again." her breath was shaky, like she was crying almost, "_You wouldn't dare to shoot him. _Who should I shoot then!

"Alice are you-?" she pulled the trigger Dodge flinched.

Someone screamed, Dodge turned on his heel. Wondering for a moment why he wasn't shot. Then he saw Charlotte, there was a stain on her clothes. From the shoulder, spreading fast. She's not screaming, not yet, the shock hasn't worn off. The stain is spreading to her fingers, pooling at the tips, before the stain spreads to the floor.

"Dodge, it hurts." H e wasn't aware of when she started crying or when she fell from pain or when he ended up next to her, " Dodge, make it stop!"

She loves him, and in her love thinks that there is nothing he cannot do. Dodge is not there when she begs him though, he's three years ago, in a basement holding another girl who's bleeding because of him. For a fleeting moment Dodge thinks she might bleed out before he can ever get her to a hospital.


	15. Chapter15: An End

1097

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Laine was losing her mind. Even while she counted down, ninety million seconds, one point six million minutes, twenty six thousand hours, and some thousand odd days. She was absolutely lost in her own mind, trying to remember a time when her family had not been falling to pieces. It had been so long, she had been such a bad mother. She knew there were some things she could not have done anything about but there was much she could have.

Gotten a head doctor for the girls, rather than pretend they were normal. Laine pressed a hand to her temple as a migraine flared. Pretending why did she always have to pretend? It was so tiring, she felt so sick of it. Pretending everything was perfect, that this little bit would make everything perfect. That if she could even the score everything would feel alright again and she could be happy. Why would any one do something they hated so much?

She had been wandering between rooms for several minutes, the kitchen first, the cooking knives lay all out in a row on the counter. The bathroom cupboard, the already empty aspirin lay discarded on the floor. Back to the knives in the kitchen, briefly and then she turned off the light and the fan and climbed onto the small ding table. After a few moments she kicked it away, jerking suspended in the air for the longest minutes of her life. And then she was still. The knives untouched on the counter, she didn't want to leave a mess

Once she had wanted to see her children grow up, go to good colleges, marry nice people, and bring home grandchildren for her to spoil like grandmothers sometimes do. She had imagined quiet happy days alone with the people she loved. Growing old in a pretty house with the man she married. She had thought that towards the end she might be alone for a short while. And then a quiet death in her sleep. She had been right about one thing at least, in the end she was completely alone.

Weeks would pass, and there were not any neighbors or relatives who cared enough to check when Laine did not leave for several days. Dodge was with Charlotte, Alice had her own plans to pursue. In the end it was Erin who found her, she had known before she got inside. The smell like meat gone bad, there was no way you could possibly ignore it. And despite that no one else had bothered to come looking.

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	16. Chapter16: Amongst Mad People

995

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"Dodgey? I've been thinking very deeply and very seriously about a lot of things."

Dodge smiled at Charlotte as he came in her hospital room, "That's the most terrifying thing you have ever said, what could you possibly be thinking about deeply _and_ seriously?"

Charlotte frowned and whacked him playfully as he got closer, " A lot of things! I've got more time than I know what to do with if I don't have to go to school. You know I actually miss going? Staying here is so boring."

"Well you know, only boring people get bored, and you're not a boring person. Seriously what have you been thinking about?"

"Life, and dying. I mean what if something happened to one of us? And what if we hadn't done every thing we wanted to do together?" Charlotte said struggling to get her point across, " Like I almost died going to a freakin' club, people die all the time in this city just walking down the streets."

"What do you want to do? We can't just leave. You're in social services, your worker would kinda notice if we split town."

Charlotte shook her head and smiled hopefully, "Thirty percent of kids in foster care run, sure they'll notice but they're spread so thin they won't ever find us. When they let me out of the hospital we could go anywhere else. Carolina, Florida, Ohio, maybe California! Don't you get it? We don't have anything to lose even if they catch us."

They were silent for a moment mulling the information over. How many people did they hear about dying violent deaths in Gotham? How many lives were ruined here? But the question that it really came down to was whether it was to late for them to get out.

Dodge nodded slowly, then leaned down to kiss Charlotte, "As soon as you get out of the hospital we'll go anywhere you want."

"Thank you Dodge."

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One syringe already lay empty on the table and Hatter prepared a second, where was it? Not the syringe that was in her hand, and in her arm. No where was that feeling, forgetting everything that made her miserable? Why wasn't it enough yet? There it was contented hatter floated away into some recess of their mind and Alice rose to the front shakily trying to operate through the haze of drugs. Today there was the cat grinning until it's mouth split standing in the doorway. Alice watched it for a moment convince=ing herself that it wasn't there as it toyed with some pulsing organ that seemed to be pounding so furiously that the sound reverberated through the apartment. She walked through it, out of her room into the hall until she reached the front door. She opened it and the knocking stopped. The queen of hearts stopped mid knock to watch Alice close her eyes and shut the door


	17. Chapter17: Paradoxial

972

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Mathew checked the address he'd been given again, it was still correct he was still at the right place. He knocked several times, no response. He continued, and there was a series of crashes and heavy footsteps. And the door burst open.

"Leave me alone, you're not even real! Always at my door, and I can't take it! You are not real, you're just something in my head why won't you go away?" she screamed and hit at him in mad desperation trying to disipate what she thought to be a hallucination.

Mathew caught Alice's hands, "Calm down it's fine I'm not in your head I'm real, see?"

Alice stopped for a moment trying to understand that he was really there. Then she smiled,_ Some one's come to see you hatter… _they switched suddenly and Hatter started struggling angrily, " Get out! I don't want you here! I don't need you!"

"Just listen to me, for… one minute," Mathew said struggling to keep Hatter from hurting either of them too badly, "I wouldn't do anything to hurt you! ….Tiffany is my sister."

Hatter stopped for a moment trying to understand what Mathew meant, "She's your…? But she said that you were-"

"She lied, I swear she lied."

Hatter smiled, something like relief flooded her and Mathew let go of her hands. She felt so happy, it was real, everything was real, everything was, then she grimaced and tensed with rage, _" No! Why do you get what I can't have! It's not fair Hatter! Why do you always want to hurt me like this!"_

She grabbed something, Mathew didn't have time to see what, a book maybe or a lamp. She threw it and got him over the head, Mathew stumbled seeing stars. Alice kicked him hard in the back of the leg and he stumbled and fell. She was on him suddenly, with whatever it was that she had thrown at him before. A lamp he saw now, the end of the cord was ripped out and still in the wall. With strength brought on by anger she beat him into unconsciousness.

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It's, different, in many ways how she treats me. I don't pretend that Alice likes me at all. No she hates me and she is doing her best to hurt me for as long as she possibly can. It's not like what happened to her sister though, there was an almost scientific carrying out of torture there. Sometimes very creative torture, we never fail to come up with creative ideas to kill each other. March Tetch was a gory, bloody mess, and complete psychological meltdown. Since I 'recovered' from being knocked out with a lamp, I have noticed Alice is trying to copy that but she lacks several things. She does not have a doctor so if she decides to play surgeon she can't fix it. She has a rather impressive array of surgical steel on a table in the corner, she has not yet decided to use any of it. I have two theories for this; she cannot stomach blood, or she is afraid to kill me. The second theory is based the theory that she wants to hurt me for a long while before I die. And she does not scare me nearly as much as I am sure she would like to.

None of that is true actually, I'm trying to convince myself that she isn't going to kill me and that I will survive this. Because if you really want to know, I think she is going to kill me, and that she couldn't care less.


	18. Chapter18: It Goes On

965

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One week, I've managed to keep away from the drugs for one week. I feel like I'm burning, dying it hurts so much. I need to find a syringe, I need to. But I've gotten this far, I'm not hallucinating, and Alice is either asleep or not here. Find the key for the door, find the key for the handcuffs, walk in the room, save Mathew, and run and get medicine and run and never stop and- _and what Hatter? You couldn't ever run away from me, and why would you? Don't you like me? You've killed for me._

You don't understand._**You**__ don't understand._

Let him go,_ bring her back_….but I can't, _then I won't._

I hate you, _liar_.

You're so like me, Alice, it's disturbing. But you're not me. You're pretending, like a child, you can't be me. You're soft and weak. _I'm not the addict, I'm stronger than you are Hatter. Why don't you come and watch me take apart your Mathew like a rag doll? I've been reading, I know where the veins are, nerves tendons. Do you remember? You cut her ankles and pushed my sister down a flight of stairs? Some times, I wish I didn't care about you to much to hate you._

I can't even be alone in my own head. I'll take the medicine, that's what I should do. I don't remember which of us came first, why can't I remember? If I took the medicine would I go away. I know I'm real, I think therefore I am, like the old saying goes but so does Alice. I remember growing up, I remember having a childhood. Unless those are Alice's memories. If I take the medicine I might die and then so would Mathew, but if I don't then he might die anyway. Why am I so confused…..

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Alice would never have admitted it but as strong as she wanted to be, she had no stomach for gore. She was no Mengele like Hatter had been, she could not torture a person. She had beaten him but she couldn't go beyond bruises, even broken bones were too much for her. She could kill perhaps but it would have to be quick and easy. She knew that now as she felt sick looking at the knife she was holding. But there was a gun and she could pull a trigger.

"I read the papers, you found the killer you were looking for. You were supposed to go back to California. I was wondering why they weren't looking for you yet," Alice pulled back the hock on the gun. Then she blinked and when she looked down the cartridge was on the table top.

Alice laughed under her breath and reinserted the cartridge but the gun had been thrown across the room, "Are we going to play these games?"

And the knives were suddenly clattering and spinning on the floor. Alice tried to keep her control but she couldn't. _I've been taking our medicine, _"But I'm the real one! You can't DO that!"

But she has done it and Alice is losing so she takes a little stamp with a brightly colored Disney character and swallows it whole.

It isn't nearly enough drugs to feel much of anything but still Hatter is nervous and as she cuts Mathew free the knife digs too deep and there is blood. But he doesn't care because they are together and for now they will be safe.

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960

It is late almost ten, and the bus stop is empty except for two teenagers. The boy is carrying a suitcase, and the girl clings to him. At ten fifteen the bus pulls up and they get on, Charlotte never even looks back. Dodge wonders what will become of the only family he has left.

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So obviously I haven't been on in a while, hetalia and anime and tumblr and just stuff went down. And realistically this series bothers me now, I mean I'm like three years older than when I started this whole thing and I don't even like it any more. I don't know if I want to finish it, I think I will just for the sake of finishing. But idk at this point…..


	19. Chapter 19

953

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His sister leaves drugs stashed around the apartment, dealers are rarely untouched by their product. He told me she stayed here sometimes and I knew if I looked I could find what I wanted. Ziplock bags of lsd stamps in vents, heroin tape under the sink in the bathroom. In the event that I am particularly desperate, and it humiliates me to know that I will eventually be desperate enough, there is a waterproofed box lined thinly with white powder in the tank of the toilet.

He's trying to help me, there are not many people who have been as nice to me as Mathew. He kept me sober for a week. I don't like taking the drugs, but there is nothing worse than being sober. At first it felt like I didn't even have my own body under my control, that wasn't new thought my entire life has been a very long spastic episode of me bickering with _her. _I can deal with that, but then it starts to burn, that's the heroin of course trying to purge itself from every single place in my body at once. I might even have lived with that, I really think I could have done it if that was it. But I just didn't feel like it was worth it. After the pain, it was like a bomb had gone off and everything was waste and ruin and ash and nuclear-cauterized. There was nothing, literally nothing in the world at all. Every time I took a breath it was because I had to remind myself it was worth it, and it was getting to hard to remember why it was worth it. I lost it when I took a bath one night. I decided, and it was a conscious decision, to lay back until my head was under water and then inhale.

Mathew heard me choking while I tried to keep under, and I told him I fell asleep. Then I took the syringes out from under the sink.

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931

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Mathew is used to being woken up at nearly ungodly hours by the discreet opening and closing of his front door. Tiffany has a key after all, no need to wake the neighbors at these times with her knocking. Hatter curls further into herself as she sleeps disturbed only when he stumbles out of bed and into the hallway to see the state of his sister. Tiffany is usually fine when she comes home, if addled and shaken by the drugs. Occasionally she requires medical attention, drugs are after all a dangerous business and normal junkies can get violent when they need a fix. Her taste in side jobs though is hardly normal and to Mathew it seems that she enjoys danger.

There is a second set of footsteps behind Tiffany's, quieter and more careful. In the past month she came by once or twice a week, for a few hours maybe, each time Mathew had waited ten minutes or so until she was asleep or otherwise distracted to slip out with Hatter. Of course he knew he'd have to choose between them eventually but how was he supposed to? His sister, his little sister, who was really just a child still, who would never survive alone and the girl he loved who would die on her own before long as well.

Tiffany often had visitors as he said before but she rarely let them actually come inside, and Mathew edged closer to the kitchen to get a look at them. As per usual her clothes were ridiculous and violently neon, not inappropriate for a club or a rave. Not that Mathew had much experience with raves. The second person was obviously not frequenting the same venues as his sister, as the only particularly defining article of clothing she wore was a grey coat. Her remembered her from before, Erin.

For a moment Tiffany looked over and she looked terrified, she had already told him everything on Christmas. Mathew wanted to go over and put an end to it all right there, among other things he wouldn't have known what to do to end anything at all at that moment. Among other things she was his sister. So when she flicked her eyes from him to his bedroom door, hoping that he would just go back to sleep Mathew returned to his room and locked the door.

"Family problems huh?" the exchange, not longer than fifteen seconds, was not lost on Erin, "What did you want to tell me?"

"I have a list, a long-ish list of things actually uhm comparatively, I do know exactly where Tetch is," Tiffany hesitated and chewed a fingertip trying to phrase the next part, "She hasn't been buying from me lately and -"

"Come on, Hollywood skip to the last two sentences"

"Okay, okay basically I know Matt doesn't do drugs but my stash has been depleting around here and he acts pretty fucking sketch whenever I come home sneaking around and stuff. I'm pretty sure he found her and he's been keeping her here. I can't pull anything, He would probably kill me, but yeah….."

The room was dark and quiet, while Erin thought it over. Tiffany hadn't bothered to turn the lights on. Erin stood and began walking towards the door again " I'll see what happens, maybe it will be a …learning experience for her to lose someone important."

"Alri- wait you don't mean that anything will happen to Mathew? Erin? Erin he's my brother, you cannot-" but the door closed without a response and Tiffany silently convinced herself that nothing at all was wrong.


	20. Chapter 20

876

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It was an uncharacteristically sunny day, sunny but not overbearingly humid like it was often in the summer. Sunny warm with a slight breeze that pushed the slight scent of salt sea air from Gotham bay over the rest of the city. Mathew was called to go on scene to take a look at the apparent homicide of a Jane Doe and then deal with the autopsy afterward.

The scene spanned a few blocks of alleys and side streets, the victim had been shot but had bled out trying to get to help. Evan met him at the beginning of the trail which they planned to followed until the met the cleanup crew and the body.

"She was shot here, it went clean through her shoulder it looks like you can see where the bullet hit the bricks there. There was a purse," Evan held up and evidence bag with a boxy orange purse, " In the dumpster, some kind of designer we'll get the exact one when we get back and check their purchase records and see if we can get a match."

"It's Hermes, but it looks fake. My sister has one like it. It looks like she stayed here for a while before she got it together enough to move," Mathew said looking at a large puddle of blood, "Looks like a pretty cut and dry robbery."

Evan nodded and followed the trail another couple of feet, " She lost a shoe over there, you never said you had a sister."

"She's a little different, and I know what you're thinking definitely not your type," the shoe was flagged but had yet to be picked up and Mathew knelt to look at it. It was a strappy sandal the heel rather than a simple point was a little golden carp, "That's funny, I didn't think that any one had shoes like this except-"

There had been a day a few years ago when tiffany had gotten her heel stuck in a sewer grate broken it off. There was a reason people didn't have shoes with fish for heels. Tiffany, instead of gluing the heel back on had bought paperweights shaped like fish and used those instead. Tiffany whose favorite purse was an orange designer knockoff and who maybe got a rush from danger that she couldn't get from drugs. And who at the end of the trail of blood had collapsed and died because of an addict with a gun and no money to pay her. Sunny days like this would have reminded her of California.

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874

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Mathews sister is dead, I want him to be alright. I worry for him, he didn't want to cry in front of me, he can be such a guy. I don't know how to help him, can I? I think in a few years it wont hurt so badly, I wouldn't know. I want to say something but I don't know what to say. I do know someone who would know. So now I'm wondering I'm standing in the bathroom alternately debating whether to take the Risperidone that so long has kept me sane and when the drugs stashed every where will run out, and what I'll do then and what will she do if I don't take the medication? Would she try to say something to him? I don't know but I've got the little orange prescription container and then I've put it back unopened.

I waited as long as I could to decide, until there were things creeping around the edges of my eyes and up the walls and noises were piling up in my head.

Alice? Alice, his sister died. Can you-?, _I can, _will you? _…You don't know how bad it hurts, or you wouldn't expect me to say no. _I smiled she was still so Alice. _I'm really not like you at all. I wish I was, but since I'm not I'll do what I can._

(i am going to finish this, we're almost done as it is i cant imagine this'll hit thirty chapters. And as soon as i finish maybe sooner, i am going back to From the Desk of Dr Arkham and doing a complete rewrite. as far as finishing goes, i think this will be done soon i'm thinking 2-3 more chapters i always meant to get a little time skippy at this point and a lot of it is written i just need to fill in some blanks and connect some dots but its definetly a thing.)_  
><em>


	21. Chapter 21

856-

The fighting is almost constant. It becomes very deeply apparent that Hatter was never sober. Mathew throws things out and Hatter moves the others. For years Mathew had lived out the same relationship with Tiffany, she was outgoing but she shied away from confrontation. Hatter ran into it head on. Invariably she started yelling first, where had the drugs gone? Maybe she didn't want his help, maybe she didn't mind being like this. So what if she didn't like it? As far as Hatter cared it was better than the alternative. In the end one of them would storm out. Hatter would sometimes go out for hours until she was forced to come back, if only for her medicine.

Eventually there came a day when there were indeed no more drugs to be found in the apartment. She tried one day to go out while Mathew was at work to go a seedier bar and acquire a new dealer. Only to run into him on the stairs, having forgotten his keys to the morgue. She lied to him abut where she had intended to go, and badly. His smile was sad, tired and when he spoke it was with the strain of a relationship that was threatening all to much to end with another girl shot dead in an alleyway. If he came home and she was not there or drugged, she'd have to leave. It wasn't something he could stomach watching again.

The apartment was silent when he got home and for a few moments Mathew thought she'd left. Until he heard her retching in the bathroom. Eight months until it was over, thirty two weeks until she'd be the girl he met in the bar. Haughty and a little snappish, but excitable, clever; and he went to hold her hair.

Eight months was a long time, and it was by no means easy punctuated at first by physical problems, fevers, occasionally at night Hatter would wake up with the most desperate need for a high and spend several hours eating quite nearly anything until a bout of nausea would force her to throw it up.

It was an awful year.

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It was worth it, staying together. It was not a perfect relationship and it didn't need to be. When Mathew came home Hatter would make tea and cakes. The tea was always strong and the cakes were burnt. Sometimes Mathew made breakfast and his eggs were never underdone, or over done. He learned to dance the lobster quadrille and she stayed up to watch an entire Star Wars marathon with him. He wore coats that she made for him (the buttons never quite matched up to the holes) and she let him cut her hair, (even though it was chunky and uneven in the end.)

Sometime Hatter woke up screaming and sometimes Mathew could not sleep at all. She would stay up wit him and he held her until she felt safe enough to sleep. She was getting better and Hatter didn't see undead wonderland characters in empty rooms quite so often. Mathew never spoke about his job, but Hatter knew when the deaths were particularly gruesome and did her best.

They still fought of course, as all couples do. Once in a frenzy Hatter had smashed plates on the floor of the kitchenette. He rarely started the fights, only once had it happened. She had looked through his documents, images of corspes during autopsy and had begun to hallucinate. He stopped bringing his work home and Hatter learned to control her temper.

It wasn't perfect, but after all perfect was never what they wanted.


	22. Chapter 22

72

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"You're a tease! You're a terrible tease! That's so mean, it's eleven forty, please?"

"You do realize it's a Christmas present, so it's supposed to be given on Christmas."

"Well then you can get me another present tomorrow if it will make you feel better! The suspense is killing me really it is, see?" Hatter said keeling over on the sofa and pulling a face with her tongue sticking out, "You'll have to exhume me."

"That's not funny," Mathew told her, but he was laughing so she knew it must haven been.

"I know, why don't you go get my Christmas present and-"

"I told you, you have to wait until Christmas!"

"I just want to go on a walk, to take my mind off of it or else it's going to feel like and hour instead of twenty minutes," Hatter sat back up as Mathew went to get her gift.

She slipped her hand between the cushions without really thinking about it and pulled them back at the sudden sharp pain. She wiped the blood from the tip of her finger and proceeded more cautiously this time pulling out a syringe. Hatter always thought she had cleaned out every thing that had been stashed in the apartment. She couldn't imagine that between herself and Mathew they had failed to either throw out, or consume everything. They must have missed this one little something. Break it, put it back, forget about it, give it to Mathew. The voices she had learned would not hurt her because they were her own, she knew she should listen to them. Isn't it strange though? The way that in a crowd you can hear the whisper of the most familiar voice better than the shouts of a million strangers? _Just once, just now, then never again._

She hadn't taken her risperidone in weeks, she hadn't needed to. She should have remembered, in retrospect it is always easy to remember what one should have done.

She remembered the needle breaking skin, _My turn Hatter,_ her heart raced on the high from the drugs, Blood pressure spiking. Being wrapped up in her coat and the gloves she wore; a size to small because it reminded her of the gloves a Victorian lady might have worn, tailored to fit her hand. The crunch of snow under shoes and how starkly white everything had been painted by the ice. She remembered seeing everything like it was through a long tunnel. There was faint music, some drunken midnight party surely. She could remember it was her mouth moving but they weren't her words, _Why didn't you learn rabbit? You shouldn't go amongst mad people._ and something loud. And white roses were painted red. _For_ _I dared to taint with vulgar paint the royal flower bed…_ All of that but she couldn't remember picking up the gun, she didn't remember where she might have gotten a gun

But she must have had one, because they found it in the snowdrift behind her when they took her away.

"It's fine, I'm fine," He was lying to her why was she letting him? She needed to call the hospital but he wouldn't let go of her hand and she felt numb, " Not your fault, it was-."

"It is, I need to call the medics and…" Her voice trailed off they both knew it wouldn't be in time, snow stained crimson as it fell, but slowly the snow would simply engulf it. By day time there wouldn't even be a crime scene.

Some where a clock chimed and the far off music sounded a little bit louder, "Merry Christmas, Hatter you can have your present."

"I don't want it! Just don't die!" She was crying and the tears were freezing as they fell. Mathew fumbled in his coat and finally pressed something into Hatters palm.

"Just open it, for me? Now, please, " Hatter looked down at the little box, Mathew just closed his eyes and willed himself to keep breathing just long enough for an answer.

It was beautiful, she thought. A simple diamond on a gold band. Today would have been the happiest day of her life if she hadn't….. She opened her mouth to answer the unspoken question, but he wasn't breathing

_You see what you've done to yourself? That's what you like to do isn't it? Hurt us and drown us in our own blood, any one who bothers to care about you. _I didn't do anything_ But he died, I told you I didn't like him, and if you had just listened to me, he would be alive._

Hatter screamed three words, the same three words over and over. A young woman woke up and looked out her window blearily for a moment before realizing what she saw. She screamed for the police. Eventually they would come, take her away, cover the body, and clean up the blood. The screaming would die down to a hoarse whisper, but all the while the same words played like a broken record.

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you….."

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It might be a another hour before the news decided to run the story and Erin would for it. She waited in her kitchen in the bluish glare of the television and early morning. Refilling bullets in magazines for a gun she did not have.

(OH my god its done, i would now highly reccomend rereading The War Inside Her Head there may be some things made more apparent by this ending? idk but i am now going to rewrite the entire series because this is ridiculous. i dont why i have characters in the nolanverse when they were kindof obviously meant for a slightly darker TAS. It will probably stay nolanverse in the rewrite, and there will be some serious character revamps. in fact im going to post it as a completely seperate story so i can watch my progress. Same chars, similar plot hopefully better written)


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